June 23, 2016

Jurors were not played the Taurus recording, which contains a section that sounds very similar to the instantly recognizable start of Stairway. Instead, they were played guitar and piano renditions by musicians on both sides of the case. Not surprisingly, the plaintiff's version on guitar sounded more like Stairway than the defense version on piano.

Experts for both sides dissected both compositions, agreeing mainly that they shared a descending chord progression that dates back three centuries as a building block in lots of songs....

Jurors never heard a note from Page or Plant live, but they were treated to lo-fi vintage recordings of the band creating the song, renditions on guitar and piano by other musicians and, finally, the full recording of one of rock's most enduring anthems.

Page, 72, bobbed his head and moved to the tune while Plant, 67, sat still. Both men wore sharp suits, white shirts and ties throughout the trial and had their hair pulled back in neat ponytails. They didn't chat with anyone in the gallery, including several fans, and were escorted by personal bodyguards to the restroom and in and out of the federal courthouse each day....

I went and listened to the two songs on youtube, both played on the guitar, and the first thing that strikes me is that Stairway to Heaven is a significantly better song than Taurus.

Beyond that we are talking about a small portion of each that is similar, and even within that small portion there are substantial differences. I lack the proper terminology but within this portion there's a track or sequence of notes that's essential the same in both, except that in the Led Zeppelin version there's another track or sequence of notes laid in on top of that common portion.

That combination transforms the experience so that even though there's a recognizable common element it overall adds up to a significantly different thing.

Since the two bands performed together it seems to me that the author of Stairway to Heaven most likely had heard Taurus and to some extent had been influenced by it. But it need not have been a conscious awareness.

Given the many differences between the two songs and the common elements that so many songs in general share, I'm pleased that the jury made the decision that it did.

A different ruling, if consistently applied, would have led to chaos in the music industry, as most music, by a similar reasoning, would be called plagiarism of earlier pieces.

A comparative analysis of the sheet music was posted by Eric Brook at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UNbXL27cwc. I know very little about music, but Brook's analysis seems very persuasive to me. He points out that aside from the descending minor scale baseline, which was already popular in the 16 and 1700s, and also the opening triad of notes, there's little in common between the two songs. That same ascending triad is repeated several times in Taurus, but after the opening in Stairway it appears twice again only in descending order.